Poetry from Olivia Weaver

Winter Sundays

I would wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking

Pull free from the red balmy quilts, almost suffocating

Slip through the gloomy hallways, bigger when they’re sleeping

Trace my fingers through the grooves in the cold walls until

I’d find the soft gleaming of the heater’s metal switch,

Shining like some imitation North Star

Flick it over, listening for the distant thrumming

 

I used to pretend there was a dragon rumbling

Somewhere within the walls, blooming smoke

A purring furnace against the

 

Wild howling of the winter

Banging on the door, stamping on the steps, muttering under the sill

 

The cold is crippling

I’d nest in the plush covers on the couch

Curl within that circle of heat, almost smoldering

Watching through the wide windows the blurring of the whites

The shell of the fresh-fallen sun and the crackling of the snow

The sky and the ground lost definition and merged

 

I wanted to see the sunrise

Wanted to see those colors play on the blank screen of the ground

Wanted to see the lights pull free from heavy quilts, too

Wanted to see them shatter like mosaics on the ice

But the colors smudged under my eyelids

And when I woke again, dawn was washing her paints off her hands

 

Oblivion

I’ll take you to my secret places

My scared places, here, shrouded

Veiled behind layers of thick, sleepy mists

On this fading cliff face

I peer into the distance

The city is swathed in heavy gray, stretching

 

I feel nothing

But the dew that freezes

In the marrow of my bones

I become one with the cold

 

I hear nothing

Only the gales that roar

Along the folds of my ears

They smother out any possibilities of sound

 

I cannot smell the world’s ugliness

The rushing fog that howls around me

Swirls into me, through me

The only scent here is ice

 

My tongue, exposed, is stripped

I feel white soldiers shrinking behind my gums

This probing fog grapples

My yawn is interrupted by chattering teeth

 

I see surreal

I came here often, and I dreamed

Too much

I was blindfolded by sight alone

 

Only silhouettes of phantoms,

Shadows of echoes, remain

These spiraling sprits that infiltrate the sky

And leave their damp footprints in my home

 

Movement

Caught the corner on a gate

Jerked backwards

Askew

 

Meant to be a dancer

Meant to be a lily, meant to

Be a fencer’s tip or a fish scale

Lost in a revolving door

 

Turning and hidden

A mind full of mirrors

Eyes like planets

Spinning, heartbeat spinning

 

Would have been flight

A smooth movement

Would have been more than

Crooked smiles

 

Fingers like unfurling ferns

Budding fruit, but interrupted

Meant to be a swan, came out a

Boy